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General Relativity for the Gifted Amateur: errata

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General Relativity for the Gifted Amateur: errata

When you find errors in the book we would be grateful if they could be emailed to tom.lancaster_at_durham.ac.uk.

Corrections to the scientific content

We recommend that you correct the following errors in your copy of the book.

  • Page 7, eqn 7: missing factor of 31/2 on the right hand side.
  • Page 48, sidenote 9: the position of the subscript ‘0’ and label ‘obs’ should be swapped, such that ‘0’ becomes the superscript.
  • Page 53, below 4.51: the variable given as rho on the right hand side of the expression, should be a p.
  • Page 58, sidenote 7: y = r cosθ should read r sinθ.
  • Page 94: eqn 8.17: the first term on the right-hand side of the second equation is missing a factor cosθ.
  • Page 98, eq. 8.38 should read dr/dt = [(r – 2GM)/(r + 2GM)]1/2.
  • Page 103 , eqn 9.9: inside the bracket on the right-hand-side, the factor of dr/dλ should be squared.
  • Page 104, eqn 9.23: the index μ in the variable xμ on the right-hand-side should be ν.
  • Page 105: Eq. (9.36) the expression for Γvuu should have a in the denominator rather than u.
  • Page 112, eqn 10.28, the subscript “r-hat” on the “e” should be “theta-hat”.
  • Page 123: Example 11.2, second derivative of si halfway down the final paragraph: delete factor of m on the left-hand side.
  • Page 127: Two instances of “(3,1)” should be “(1,3)”.
  • Page 129, eqn 11.38: missing minus sign on right-hand side.
  • Page 219, sidenote 4, eqn 20.2: In the 4th term of the right hand side of the first line, the dot should be removed from r (i.e. we do not take the time derivative of this variable in this term).
  • Page 224, text above eqn 20.36: there should be a factor r12 in the denominator for K1.
  • Page 224, eqn 20.37: the prefactor should be K1/u1, rather than u1/K1.
  • Page 562: sidenote 4: “covariant” should read “contravariant”.
  • Page 563: “contravariant” should read “covariant”.
  • Page 588, problem 4.4: in the equation,  r = x2 + y2 + z2, the radius r should read  r2.
  • Page 589, problem 4.4, in the second of eqns E.23, a factor of r is missing from all three of the terms on the right-hand side.
  • page 591, eqn E.71: there is an additional nonzero connection coefficient: Γrtt = –Ωr².

With grateful thanks to John Camm, Jay Epstein, Zhanzhi He, Joey LH Ooi and Leslie Rysdale.

Last updated 18/08/25